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Tony DeRose to speak at Blk Shp STEAM event

CS alumnus Tony DeRose (Ph.D. '85), currently a senior scientist and lead researcher at Pixar, will speak at Indiana University on Saturday for a STEAM event sponsored by Blk Shp, a "loose guild" of socially conscious innovators. DeRose works with a Young Makers Program that supports youth in "building ambitious, hand-on projects" and is also involved with “Pixar in a Box,” a collaboration with Khan Academy designed to show students how creative challenges at Pixar are addressed using concepts they are learning in classrooms. DeRose received the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award in 1999 and won a Scientific and Technical Academy Award for his work on surface representations in 2006.

Alex Stamos to deliver Kahn lecture at CCNY

EECS alumnus Alex Stamos (B.S. '01), currently the Chief Security Officer at Facebook, will be the featured speaker on May 10 at the 2018 Robert Kahn & Patrice Lyons Lecture, hosted by the Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York (CCNY). The title of his talk is "Building Security for All." Stamos is an expert in global scale infrastructure, designing trustworthy systems, and mobile security, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and industry events, including Black Hat, RSA, DEF CON, Milken Global, Amazon ZonCon, Microsoft Blue Hat, FS-ISAC, and Infragard. Before Facebook, Stamos served as the CISO of Yahoo, where he led the security team to develop innovative security technology and products. He was also the co-founder of security consultancy iSEC Partners, a company that helped hundreds of companies build secure and safe systems. CCNY ranks #2 in the Chronicle of Higher Education among public colleges with the greatest success in ensuring the social mobility of their student body.

Leonard Shtargot named Analog Devices Fellow

EE alumnus Leonard Shtargot (B.S. '01) has been awarded the title of Analog Devices Fellow, a distinguished technical position given to engineers who "contribute significantly to the company’s success through exceptional innovation, leadership and an unparalleled ability to unite and mentor others." Shtargot joined Linear Technology after graduation and is currently leading an R&D team focused on high performance power management ICs for automotive, industrial, and telecom markets. His citation says he has "contributed innovations in power conversion technology and designed several families of high-performance DC/DC switching regulators focusing on new circuits, high-voltage silicon process improvements, advanced flip-chip package designs, and test techniques. These products have been widely adopted by the automotive and industrial technology sectors. Leonard is also a hands-on teacher who mentors other engineers and often can be found in the lab or test floor helping his colleagues solve technical problems."

Donald J. Hoffman on the need to diversify fuel sources

EE alumnus and retired Air Force general Donald J. Hoffman (M.S. '75) was interviewed by the Midwest Energy News for an article titled "Q&A: Retired Air Force general on the need to diversify fuel sources." Hoffman spent 42 years in the military as a pilot and manager of Air Force weapon systems from bases around the world. He retired in 2012 as a four-star general and now focuses on energy security and climate change as a member of the CNA Military Advisory Board (MAB), a group of retired three and four star generals from across every branch of the U.S. military. He was interviewed in April, when he participated in meetings with the Wisconsin Conservative Energy Forum, which is focused on clean energy and energy efficiency. Hoffman stressed the importance of moving to non-traditional fuels to lessen our dependence on foreign suppliers, and discussed renewable energies and govenment policy.

Silvio Micali to speak at AiDecentralized summit

CS alumnus Silvio Micali (Ph.D. '82) will speak at the AiDecentralized summit in Toronto, Canada on May 22. The first in a series of global summits initiated by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), it aims to bring AI practitioners together with cryptographers. Micali, who is currently a professor at MIT, is a pioneer in cryptography, zero knowledge, pseudorandom generation, and secure protocols. He won the Turing Award in 2012, the Gödel Prize in 1993, and the RSA Prize in 2004.

Kristin Stephens-Martinez is new assistant professor of practice at Duke

CS alumna Kristin Stephens-Martinez (M.S. '13/Ph.D. '17 advisors: Vern Paxson/Armando Fox) is a new Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Computer Science at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Her research interests lie at the intersection of education and computer science, focusing on using data available in large classrooms--both local and MOOCs. She received the Outstanding GSI (OGSI) Award from the UC Berkeley Graduate Division in 2013 and began her career at Duke in the spring where she co-taught CompSci 101: Introduction to Computer Science. She was profiled for a Duke Computer Science article titled "New Faculty: Kristin Stephens-Martinez Takes a 'Meaning-full' Approach to Data Science" in March.

Three EECS professors are featured speakers at the upcoming TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics on May 11 at Zellerbach Hall. The single-day event will focus on the crossroads of the latest AI and robotics technology and the startup ecosystem. Prof. Pieter Abbeel, who works in machine learning and robotics (and who co-founded covariant.ai and Gradescope), will talk about "Teaching Robots New Tricks with AI." Prof. Robert Full, who has a joint appointment in the Department of Integrative Biology (and who founded of CiBER), will talk about "What Robots Can Learn from Nature." Prof. Ken Goldberg, who holds appointments in IEOR, the School of Information, Art Practice, and the UCSF Dept of Radiation Oncology, will talk about "Getting A Grip on Reality: Deep Learning and Robot Grasping." He is the co-founder of the Center for New Media. Alumnus Paul Birkmeyer (Ph.D. '13), co-founder of Dishcraft Robotics, is also slated to speak.

Ram Vasudevan receives 2018 ONR Young Investigator Award

EE alumnus Ram Vasudevan (B.S. '06/M.S. '09/Ph.D. '12) is the recipient of a 2018 Young Investigator award from the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Vasudevan is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan. He was chosen for the proposal “Real-Time Certified, Safe Control Synthesis for Autonomous Systems.” The Young Investigator Program (YIP) is one of the nation’s oldest and most selective science and technology based research programs. Its purpose is to fund early-career academic researchers whose scientific pursuits show outstanding promise for supporting the Department of Defense, while also promoting their professional development.

Brighten Godfrey to present at ONUG Spring 2018

CS alumnus Brighten Godfrey (Ph.D. '09), who is the co-founder and CTO of Veriflow, will speak at the upcoming Open Networking User Group (ONUG) Spring 2018 conference on May 9. His session, “Intent-based Network Verification: Practical Use Cases,” will demonstrate how the Veriflow Continuous Network Verification platform provides network assurance with mathematical confidence. Godfrey has developed novel architectures and systems for Internet routing, data-center networking, high-performance data transport and network data-plane verification. Several of these technologies have been deployed by hyperscale cloud-computing providers. Godfrey is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

CS alumna Mary Ann Horton (Ph.D. '81) is the subject of a Daily Beast article titled "How Mary Ann Horton Invented the Email Attachment, Then Revolutionized Trans Rights." As a student, Horton contributed to Berkeley UNIX (BSD), including the vi editor and terminfo database, and created the first email attachment tool, uuencode. She then became a pioneering transgender activist who, in the 1990s and 2000s, played a key role in encouraging American companies to add the categories of gender identity and gender expression to their non-discrimination policies—and to provide transgender health benefits. It began when she encouraged her employer, Lucent, to become the first large company in the United States to include gender identity or expression in its non-discrimination policy. “Getting Lucent to do it was all about me, but once Lucent did it, I thought, this could be for everybody,” Horton remembers. “My vision was to push the snowball, and build up that snowball, and get it bigger and bigger until it would roll down the hill by itself—until I didn’t have to push it any more.”